Scheduling Changes Underway at C4 Digital Networks

PREMIUM: Jay Stuart talks to E4 chief Paul Mortimer on the big scheduling changes taking place at the British channel that will probably have a liberating effect on its production budget.

Gone are two staples of the lineup. Friends is finally being put to rest after a decade in the same slot. Ever since E4 launched, it has scheduled Friends at 8 p.m. That will end in the autumn of 2011. “We’ve never shown anything else at eight o’clock, so it’s exciting,” says Mortimer, who is channel manager of both E4 and its companion channel More4. “A factor in the decision to end the run has been the launch of our E4 HD channel. A 20-year-old series just does not work in HD.”

E4 also had Big Brother for ten years until that reality show ended last summer. “Now we have money that we used to spend on Big Brother and can do more,” says Mortimer. “It’s a year of change, and we are properly resourced. Onward and upward.”

Scheduling changes will also shift one of More4’s scheduling cornerstones. Since the launch of the channel it has carried The Daily Show with Jon Stewart every day at 8:30 p.m. That is now coming to an end this week. It will now run the global edition of the show on Monday night at 11 p.m. With the satellite costs added to the licence fee, it was just too hefty a loss leader.

The scheduling changes take place as a new executive takes the reins of programming of all the C4 channels this week. Jay Hunt, formerly controller of BBC One, becomes the first chief creative officer at the company, which functions much like a commercial broadcaster but is a public-service corporation rather than a private enterprise.

The growth of the digital market in the U.K. in the past five years has been remarkable. Digital channels accounted for 29.6 percent of viewing in 2005. In 2010, that rose to 40.1 percent. Channel 4’s portfolio share, including the flagship over-the-air C4, was 11.4 percent in 2010, down by 1 percent from last year. The C4 digital channels made up 38.6 percent of the total, or 4.4 percent of the market.

“When you look at fragmentation, you see that the old-fashioned terrestrial audience has diminished and it’s difficult to grow,” says Mortimer. “A digital channel helps to protect the market share by adding to the audience on new platforms. So you can hold on to viewers or win them back.”

Channel 4’s digital channels—which include movie channel Film 4 and a flock of music channels—account for a significant chunk of the company’s revenue (which is almost all from advertising), and are actually more profitable than the flagship Channel 4. The big channel generated revenue of £575.1 million in the year to December 31, 2009 and the digital channels did £181.3 million. But profits for the latter came in at £53.5 million, while C4 showed a loss of £59.4 million. More4 is the most profitable channel in the whole portfolio.

Channel 4 has taken a demographic approach to doing digital channels. Entertainment channel E4 is the youngest channel in the U.K with a very clear 16-34 target. More4, broadly a factual/lifestyle channel which also shows a lot of movies, is aimed at ABC1 adults.

“We don’t have shareholders or the usual profit incentive,” says Mortimer. “Our profits go right back into television, which means we can do properly funded comedy and drama. We don’t pay a digital price. We pay a fair market price.”

Next week, E4 launches a U.K. version of Tool Academy, a comedy reality show about dysfunctional couples. Another series is in post-production called The Great British Hairdresser, trying to uncover the hidden geniuses of the U.K.’s hairdressing salons.

E4 will run an original drama in the summer for the first time this year, with Beaver Falls, a one-hour comedy drama. It shows its popular series Misfits (winner of a BAFTA as the U.K.’s best TV drama) in the autumn series and teen drama Skins fills the winter. Skins is in its fifth series (the cast regenerates in order to keep the characters young). MTV remade the show for the U.S. market, with the same music and story lines but an American setting. Sitcom The In-Betweeners is E4’s biggest-ever hit. The show is carried by BBC America in the U.S., and a feature film version is in the works.

Glee is E4’s big acquired series at present. It also shows One Tree Hill, the Family Guy spin-off The Cleveland Show, 90210, How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory. “One of the great benefits of having digital channels is that it enables you to extract full value from rights,” says Mortimer. “We buy eight play days for any show. So we show a program such as One Tree Hill, for example, on Mondays at 9 p.m. and then roll it out stripped during the day. The cost is effectively written off in prime time and the repeats come at nil cost.”

More4 has no hard-and-fast rule about the programming mix. But factual is the staple. It has a lot of crossover with C4 (more than E4 does). It takes Come Dine With Me and the gardening and food and property programs.

Imported series ER has been the biggest hit on More4 to date. Now it shows the likes of The Good Wife, Southland, The Closer, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development.

More4 has started to co-produce scripted programming. It made The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret with IFC. The fish-out-of-water comedy about an American executive in Britain was produced in the U.K.

More4 shows about 40 new long-form documentaries per year and has also coproduced some of them, such as Thrilla In Manila, for its True Stories strand. The channel recently invested in street artist Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop and pre-bought Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. While E4 is a more mature business and pretty self-sufficient in terms of production finance, More4 is getting more into advertiser-funded programming. The Crufts dog show moved to More4 from BBC last year and will return in 2011. Mortimer is looking at other opportunities in this vein for More4.

The young target of E4 makes new media an important part of strategy for that channel especially, which is something new creative chief Hunt will probably be focusing on. E4 markets a lot online via Facebook to promote characters and has its own E4 YouTube page and promotes shows there. 4OD is Channel 4 group’s video-on-demand service. Most programs are shown on linear first and then streamed. But E4 does the occasional launch on 4OD seven days before the show is on the linear channel. This works best with returning shows such as Skins. E4 also premiered the new season of Misfits with an episode on iTunes seven days in advance.